What am I doing and who am I becoming? The mismatch between doctoral study and doctoral policy in the humanities
Doctoral education was historically conceived as an academic apprenticeship. Doing a doctorate meant doing original research under the guidance of a supervisor. Successfully defending one's thesis in a viva was a rite of passage that marked entry into the academic community on the basis of the student having done what academics do – contributed to knowledge in a particular discipline. Students learned the practices of their discipline and came to share its cultural values, norms and canonical knowledge. So configured, the doctorate involved the socialisation of new academics into such disciplines as History, English or Philosophy.
So what is new?
The past three decades, however, have seen radical changes in the way doctorates have been defined. Some changes reflect a drive to promote equality of opportunity, and much valuable work has gone into dismantling the structures that formerly confined entry into academic work to a minority elite. PhDs are now awarded to students who have not traditionally been encouraged or able to participate in this type of work, including women and those from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds. Such changes are to be welcomed, but one has to ask whether parallel changes to the doctorate really fit this more varied student body.
Doctoral education has also been reconfigured as a key component of the UK's so-called knowledge and skills-driven economy and the global international competitiveness of its workforce. Government pumps money into supporting doctoral study increasingly because of the 'transferable' skills that PhD students acquire. The assumption of policymakers, and indeed the present reality, is that many if not most doctoral graduates will not get academic jobs. In 2001 the Government asked Sir Gareth Roberts to review the readiness of PhD graduates in STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) to enter a variety of workplaces, and he concluded that many were lacking the skills needed both to complete their PhD study within a reasonable timeframe, and to become effective members of the broader workforce. As a result, universities currently receive 'Roberts money' – funds that are allocated specifically towards generic skills training for graduate students across all disciplines, and not just STEM subjects. The Arts and Humanities Research Board did not become a Research Council until three years after Roberts' report was published. It followed suit in allocating research training funding, but while this was initially for subject-specific skills, it is now for transferable skills training only, in keeping with the other Councils.
With the forces of government and industry steering a strongly economic agenda, the humanities PhD therefore finds itself far from its historical role in academic apprenticeship, socialisation and the generation of knowledge.
Problem #1: It's not all about research training, is it?
It can be argued that, in recent years, doctoral policy in the UK has been significantly influenced by a natural science model of rational, objective study with instrumental value – a model with little relevance to the humanities. The Research Councils have acted as the arm of government and have reshaped doctoral education as research training that produces an army of useful researchers for a knowledge- and skills-driven society. Witness the bureaucratic form-filling required of many students to demonstrate their wider skills development. Shouldn't those working in the humanities resist this? Is a doctorate involving creative arts or critical literary appraisal best seen as generic research training, configured to produce the research labour force the UK (supposedly) needs?
Problem #2: That's not why I am doing a PhD!
Either the motivations of PhD students have been ignored or they have been wrongly assumed to focus on a desire for research training. For many in the arts and humanities the doctorate remains a voyage of personal intellectual exploration, focused on a particular problem that fuels scholarly interest. Policymakers appear to have lost sight of the meaning assigned to the PhD for those who devote a good proportion of their time (and often money) to doctoral study. Students criticise broad research training courses because of their irrelevance to the projects they are pursuing. Indeed this sentiment is not confined to the humanities although it is likely felt frequently and keenly in this context. How different might things look if doctorates were shaped by a view that acknowledged the possibility of the PhD as something that is consumed, enjoyed, valued in itself, rather than viewing it purely as a production process, a cog in the greasy machinery of the economy?
Problem #3: Powerless to resist
Universities are heavily subsidised in many ways and it is hard for them to resist the direction governments take them in. The Research Councils wield disproportionate power: they are major shapers of doctoral education, but they fund only a minority of students. However, universities can acquire considerable prestige through the Councils' recognition of their courses and the receipt of studentships. The Councils can also put in place punitive measures (such as penalising departments if students take longer than four years to earn their doctorates).
Problem #4: Ignoring the majority
If policy is determined by the immediate needs of industry, and the imagined student around whom policy has been built is 21-22 years old, studying full-time, and geographically mobile, then there is a real danger that the majority of humanities students will find themselves entering a system designed to cater for a minority. One of the consequences of widening access to higher education is increasing diversity among the doctoral population. Many students, especially in the humanities, are older, studying part-time, and often have significant family and other commitments that tie them to particular places, including other countries. They may also already have significant work expertise and be far from deficient in 'transferable' skills.
Problem #5: The dark underbelly of efficiency
Higher education has become increasingly market driven, underpinned by business models tuned to labour needs of industry and commerce. This has been accompanied by managerialism, and doctoral education has succumbed to agendas focused on efficiency and standards. Regimes of surveillance and notions of standardised, timely outputs are now widespread. This sits awkwardly alongside the values held by humanities academics, which recognise the time and creativity required to engage in truly outstanding scholarship – a process that is not amenable to off-the-shelf models, generic skills development, or predictable moments of completion.
This current system demands students complete 'on time' (however arbitrarily defined), putting in place a cut-off point that pays no heed to what it means to make an original, or indeed significant contribution to knowledge. Concerns about 'delayed completion' employ a negative rhetoric of deficiency contrasted against desirable efficiency. A 'good' student is one who finishes in three or at the most four years (full-time). It is hard to turn down a prestigious Research Council studentship ('1+3'), even if it means rushing through, because the fuller, more leisurely alternative is something few can afford, and likely anyway to be squeezed by new rules and pressures within universities.
Conclusion
We need well-trained engineers, medical researchers, physicists, as well as capable historians, philosophers, linguists. However the humanities have not been punching their weight when it comes to resisting policy directions that impose irrelevant models, or policy conceptions that reconfigure the PhD as a production-line for generic skills. There is currently no clearly articulated alternative that better accommodates what is distinct and valuable about the humanities. Instead what we find are moaning opinion pieces like these.
This is a rather gloomy analysis. It is to be hoped that there remains scope for students pursuing doctorates in the humanities to enjoy, relish and grow through their experiences. This requires time and space to enable a truly scholarly approach to learning and advancing knowledge. Mark the danger of losing all sight of the value of knowledge for its own sake and the pleasure of intellectual inquiry.
References
The following works informed both the substance of argument and language used:
Collinson J & Hockey J (1997) The social science training-model doctorate: student choice. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 21(3), 373-381.
Hockey J & Allen-Collinson J (2005) Identity change: doctoral students in art and design. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 4, 77-93.
Johnson L, Lee A & Green B (2000) The PhD and the autonomous self: gender, rationality and postgraduate pedagogy. Studies in Higher Education, 25(2), 135-147.
Leonard D (2000) Transforming doctoral studies: competencies and artistry. Higher Education in Europe, 25(2), 181-192.
Nick Hopwood completed his doctorate in the field of Education and now works as a researcher for the Centre for Excellence in Preparing for Academic Practice, at the University of Oxford. The views expressed above do not represent those of the Centre or the University.
Nick Hopwood
University of Oxford
July 2008
Save page as PDF